The impact of spatial placement on valence judgments of images: a comparative analysis between right-handed and left-handed individuals

The Body Specificity Hypothesis (BSH) suggests that individuals tend to associate positive evaluations with the space corresponding to their dominant hand and negative evaluations with the non-dominant hand. Valence reinforcement effects, related to BSH, have been demonstrated when stimuli are evaluated following lateral hand movements (e.g., dominant hand rightward—positive, non-dominant hand leftward—negative) on large touchscreens and keyboards. However, limited research has explored how spatial stimuli affect explicit valence judgments without motor responses. This study investigated the impact of spatial placement across different visual fields on valence judgments of neutral images, comparing right- and left-handed individuals. Thirty participants (15 right-handed, 15 left-handed) rated neutral images displayed in the center, right, or left visual field using a 9-point Likert scale. Two experimental sessions were conducted, separated by a 3-week washout period. The first session measured baseline valence evaluations (VE) with images presented centrally, while the second session randomized the images to the left and right visual fields. Results revealed that left-handers tended to assign higher VE to images located in the left visual field (LVF) compared to the center visual field (CVF; p = .02), while right-handers rated images in the LVF more negatively than those in the CVF (p = .007). Additionally, left-handed participants exhibited a flatter pattern across spatial placements. These findings may suggest that body-specific associations are stronger in right-handed individuals, while left-handers may show reduced sensitivity to body- specific associations, due to the predominance of right-handed design in digital technologies.